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The chances of Ebola turning up in Northeast Pennsylvania may be small, but doctors and clinicians in the region took a step closer to being informed and ready for one of the greatest infectious disease threats the world has faced in years.

Shubhra Shetty, M.D., an infectious disease expert and associate regional dean for campus development at the Commonwealth Medical College in Scranton, offered an overview of the disease to more than 100 medical students, physicians and other medical professionals at Regional Hospital of Scranton on Friday afternoon.

“Nothing like hemorrhagic fever to bring the crowd out,” Dr. Shetty quipped as she looked over the packed conference room and began a somewhat grim account of the virus.

This outbreak is different, she said, already having claimed more lives — about 1,100 medically confirmed — than the 20 Ebola outbreaks on record since 1976, when it was given its new name for a river in Zaire. An infected person boarded a plane to Nigeria, taking the outbreak to a more centralized area where it could conceivably spread.

The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concerns,” something it does rarely. It did the same earlier this year with polio and several years ago with avian flu.

Clinicians around the world need to be familiar with the virus, and Dr. Shetty challenged attendees to be informed about global politics and quality-of-life issues. Between 60 and 90 percent of the people who contract the disease will die from it.

“Remember the plague? Its fatality rate was 50 percent,” she said. “Ebola is in a class by itself.”

The public and doctors have a misconception about an Ebola patient, Dr. Shetty said, as someone bleeding from various parts of the body. While that is a late-term symptom, some Ebola patients can appear fairly healthy with symptoms such as headache, fever and weakness that could resemble a more common disease, such as malaria, Lassa fever or cholera. Ebola giveaways include a red discoloration of the soft palate, bleeding rashes and the patient complaining of a feeling of a “ball in the throat.”

In final stages, patients fall into a stupor and shock, with massive bleeding.

“It’s a terrible way to die,” Dr. Shetty said.

She urged extreme caution for health care workers.

“We think we are immune to everything, and we get cavalier,” she said, noting that a Sierra Leone physician contracted the virus from helping a patient who had collapsed in his clinic.

Ebola even looks menacing. A slide featuring a highly magnified image of the virus looked like cobra markings to Dr. Shetty.

The disease probably came from a fruit bat, carriers of the virus, which spread it via saliva to small wild animals such as chimps or other mammals sold under the collective term “bushmeat.” But it is the preparation, not necessarily the consumption, that transmits the disease from animal to human. The virus is present in body fluids, including sweat, and feces. The virus has been found in the semen of survivors for as much as 71 days.

Patient zero was a 2-year-old boy who died Dec. 6. His family died within a week. Two mourners at his funeral took the disease home, and an epidemic was born. Funeral practices, including caring for the body and grieving over it, spread the disease.

“The dead body is teeming with the virus,” she said.

There’s no cure for Ebola, she said, and the most that could be done for patients is offering coagulation drugs and fluids, and hoping the patient’s immune system kicks in, as it mysteriously does for those who survive.

“We don’t pay much attention to what’s happening in other parts of the world. We are one global community, and if we don’t work together, these diseases will affect everybody,” she said. “If we get five cases in the U.S. — look out for how fast that changes.”

Contact the writer: dfalchek@timesshamrock.com

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